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General Election: Insurgent UKIP in Positive Mood

The polls open at 7am tomorrow for voters to cast their ballot in the 2015 general election. The insurgent UK Independence Party (UKIP) has turned this election into the most unpredictable contest in decades. Their standing in the polls is uncertain and methodologies are disputed, with ratings ranging from 10 to 18% among the trad pollsters, and as much as 53% in high volume online polls.

Clearly, UKIP supporters are very active online, the party’s Facebook page has more likes than all but the Conservatives, who spend big bucks to buy bucketloads of approval monthly. Leader Nigel Farage has 224,000 twitter followers. This online activity is partly due to the attacks on, and exclusion of UKIP from the mainstream media. Kippers have found their natural medium, where news and views can be formulated by anyone and exchanged in quickfire fashion. It’s what Douglas Carswell refers to as iDemocracy.

This has had a beneficial effect on UKIP, not solely in terms of visibility, but also in terms of shaping policy direction. Memes rapidly emerge, and good ideas are noted by the party’s leadership for inclusion into policy discussion. This makes the party internally meritocratic; ordinary party members can be heard by senior party officials.

As well as individuals being heard, the general direction of travel of the will of the membership-massive is clearer, and the shifts in policy emphasis and content over the last year reflect this. It’s no accident that during April, the number of 2010 Labour voters expressing support for UKIP rose as a percentage of party supporters from 7 to 19%. No doubt part of this shift is due to some 2010 conservative voters drifting back to their old voting habits in fear of letting in a Lab/SNP alliance, but it also puts the lie to the media stereotyping of UKIP as a party of ex-conservatives, who in fact made up less than a third of the voters who elected Mark Reckless in the Rochester and Strood by-election.

UKIP is growing and has successfully developed a mature policy offering distinct from the old parties, but not through being extreme. Somehow the party is capturing the centre ground whilst retaining a lot more radical potential than the LibDems. Reading the UKIP manifesto is like a breath of fresh air, and I highly recommend it to Talkshop readers, even those outside the UK. The party is already influential too, look at how many UKIP policies have been adopted by the other parties already, in an attempt to retain the voters who are switching to the insurgent party.

UK Talkshop readers will have decided who they will vote for already, and this isn’t an attempt to canvass additional support at the eleventh hour. UKIP will exceed expectations tomorrow, as they have at the last five by-elections, and the European and local Elections last year. I’m so confident we’ll beat the national pollsters predictions ‘snapshots’ that I’ve done something I very occasionally do, which is bet on the outcome of an certain proposition. When UKIP get significantly more than 15% of the national vote, I will have enough cash to buy my fellow branch members a drink or two at our after-count party on Friday. We will win seats on Leeds City Council tomorrow. Whether the one I’m standing for in addition to standing as the parliamentary candidate will be one of them remains to be seen.

Our country desperately needs real change in the makeup of its political leadership. A narrow clique has developed which contains too many old school chums who all did the same degree in politics, philosophy and economics. There are too many millionaire lawyers and leeches on the front benches. To solve the problems the UK faces, we need engineers and doctors, policemen and women, people with more real life experience outside the Westminster bubble. Tomorrow presents the opportunity to make it so.

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Just one reminder to your supporters on this Election Eve, the day of the final push, and to all readers who’re pondering if voting UKIP helps even in seats with a huge majority for the incumbent:
every single vote cast for UKIP will count towards what is called ‘short money’, i.e. a financial contribution to Parties which have three (I think) or more MPs elected.
So vote with your conscience, and sod tactical voting: every vote counts, none is wasted!

It seems though that UKIP peaked too early? I think the Tories will win by a small majority. When the people who can be bothered to vote get into that polling booth it’ll be a case of ‘better the devil you know’ – 1992 all over again. The manner of this campaign has left me thoroughly fed up with the whole system

The media establishment loves to inflate bubbles they can then pop at a time that they calculate to have maximum effect. After the excitement of the two by-election wins, the long slog thropiugh the general election campaign brings fatigue on both activists and voters.

But UKIP’s standing in the polls has held up remarkably well. The prediction and assumption was that support would ebb away quickly as the election approached and people reverted to ‘better the devil you know’ thinking. Fact is, the devils are known so well, people are still liking the risk/reward an alternative offers.

Anyway, you can’t trust pollsters who either don’t prompt for UKIP by name:
“Will you vote Labour, conservative, Liberal Democrat or for some other party?”
or they allocate over 90% of the 25% of the electorate who tell them they are undecided or won’t say to the main parties on the basis of 2010 results, when a lot of them are actually shy kippers who don’t want to be stigmatised by people bearing clipboards and pens.

The media and pollsters are in for a big surprise on Friday. Colliemum is spot on, vote for what you believe in, don’t play the game the pro-EU parties want you to play.

Sadly first past the post brings little reward to the minor parties.
Consider the effect of multi-seat electorates, say 5. UKIP would be gong to Westminster with 80-110 seats. Yet even with the odds against you, 10 seats would be enough to make you mark.

I am not voting, mostly because I am a long way away and not eligible, but I wish the only party with a sane policy on electricity (alone) all the best.

I wish UKIP very much success, even knowing this will receive my home country a check, and that’s what worries me most.

After 20 years of working and living in the continent’s very last direct democracy we returned to care for the aged and infirm in our family. And we have not found again our home country!

– the conservative parties had already sold their soul to greencrap snakeoil utopians

– the liberal party had already gambled away not only their swing voters but also their future

– the socialist/left parties had fought and won the janitor’s job for centrally planned economy GDR 2.0

But, and that’s something of ridiculous, there were also two ignes fatui “political parties” which bother me:

– one run by unemployed IT clerks who demand the electorate click only their homepage

– the other run by anointed academics who claim to be privy to freaking esoteric unknowingness

None of the above is by any conceivable means a clear-cut eligible partner which can ally themselves with UKIP, that’s what worries me. Instead, these formerly democratic parties in EU of Germany pay €15k welfare to 7-headed workless asylum seekers, for whom the adherents of western ideology are infidels who must be exploited and subdued.

And if that were not already enough, the mayors, lobbyists and MSM erected subsidized moonshine energy systems and constantly press the power plants to shut down fossil fueled baseload powerhouses, even the new ones which never served the grid.

Go UKIP, GO! our people need life planning which they control themselves!

Wish you & UKIP well. Hope you win at least 10 seats and come second in over 50% of electorates. Pity it is first past the post voting -the system that got Hitler elected. What you need is optional preferential voted so you can put the least liked (communists, greens, labour at the bottom) and for the Tories put UKIP ahead of Labour.

Watching from my seat here in New York, I wish all the UKIP candidates the best in your election battle. You guys and gals are lucky to have a party like UKIP and someone like Nigel Farage who has the courage of his convictions unlike 99% of the politicians in the USA.

I have come to believe that America’s 2 party system has become a monopoly and there is no hope of real change as long as there can be no real 3rd party of influence. I think we would be better off with a parliamentarian system such as they have in the UK where even minor parties can have some clout.

I have been reading about the effect the global warming/climate change thuggery has had on the UK and the hardships that have been created by scumbags like that guy Red Ed (Millband). Even I can’t believe he has the audacity to run on those positions. Not to mention the 1000 lb. gorilla in the room- the radicalized Islamic immigrants who seem to be growing like a blight in your country and mine. What about the death of free speech? These are issues that must be spoken about in the open without fear of reprisal. Unless we start seeing some victories for UKIP and its ilk, the lights will continue to go out.

Being an OZ I don’t get to vote – but if I could, UKIP would get my vote – most particularly because of UKIP’s commitment to taking back sovereignty across all fields of UK’s traditional and singularly robust systems of governance and jurisprudence, and concurrently freeing itself from the smothering, degrading and undemocratic yoke of EC/EU dictatorship.

Roger, best of luck to you and the rest of the UKIPpers.
One of the saddest things for me that has come out of the TV talk shows, Like Victoria on BBC News is how many of the “undecided” are young and that they appear to have no experience and no knowledge of our recent political history.
They don’t seem to understand what was done to the country under Thatcher, which was then continued and made even worse by 15 years of Labour.
How anyone can vote for them after 2 illegal wars, which cost billions, the raid on every single Pension Fund (except their own) which created black holes in all of them, selling our Gold when prices were rock bottom. Totally squandering the “North Sea Oil” revenue without any investment in Infrastructure.

Hi Roger all the best for tomorrow, ive been reading your blogg since you had your collar felt by Pc Plod but never commented before due to the technical nature of most of your articles. I Am a passionate sceptic of dangerous manmade climate change and so will be voting UKIP despite being a lifelong labour voting socialist from a mining village in north Notts. Theire will be some here that are tempted to vote UKIP that still cant bring themselves to desert the traditional parties they have voted for in the past so thought i would share my thoughts as to why i have. I have come to realise that party politics has corrupted Democracy by putting the demands and wishes of both the party whips and the lobbyist carpetbaggers ahead of the electorate that they are supposed to represent. UKIP are the only party that have tried to address this issue in their manifesto another reason to vote UKIP at least this time around ,even if like me you are disillusioned with party politics in general.

A strong result for UKIP will be important not just for the UK, but other nations as well. It is not just the traditional parties that need a smack on the snout, but the lame scream meeja who have campaigned so hard against the UKIP. The media classes in the UK, Europe US, Canada and Australia campaign relentlessly against conservatives. They need to be shown that they are no longer the gatekeepers of opinion nor record.

The election, messy business with very little information for anyone who doesn’t use the mass media.

I’ve seen things change, rarely for the better, different furniture, same leeches and repression.

I really don’t know what to vote because this is specific to here, tactical has to be the game and that means the least bad. There is no point in voting UKIP, risks letting in a poor choice.

We also have local elections. On that there has been almost complete silence through the letter box. UKIP did post a flier, first I heard they are running in the local election. The points made are rather good if unlikely to come to pass.

First up is a very tolerant point I have been banging on about the years, the nastiness of charging for parking at hospitals, complete with contrived make things as awkward as feasible. Are people ill by choice? Do people outside of a town have a choice? Charging visitors is nice? Doubt the money breaks even given the infrastructure, employ people to pay themselves?

“Eve of poll” is one of the holy days in the liturgical calendar of the political class. It is a red-letter day for politicians, exhausted after weeks of cack-handed lying, evasions and insincere drivel. It signals to them that within 24 hours they will be free of the necessity even to pretend to heed the concerns and wishes of the mug punters who compose the electorate.

Take a careful look at that abject creature, decked out in a gaudy rosette such as ornaments prize-winning sows at agricultural shows, polluting your doorstep. Smirking, cringing, sweating, patronisingly admiring your roses, he has only one desire: to carry out your commands. Concerned about immigration? Why didn’t you say so before? Not one more Rumanian will enter Britain if you return him to Parliament. HS2? Okay, he may have supported it in the last Parliament, but he is now re-thinking his position. Same-sex marriage? Just because he voted for it, that doesn’t mean he likes it any more than you do.

Fast forward a week, or even 48 hours, and the supplicant will be transformed into a braying, opinionated, arrogant dictator, embarking on five more years of imposing on the citizenry the PC prescriptions favoured by the swarming pathogens on the slime-green benches. Throughout that period of electoral reprieve he will never again speak to, much less listen to, a normal, average Briton. His sentiments on returning to the gothic halls of the rats’ nest on the Thames will be: thank God we don’t need to have anything to do with the grisly electorate for another five years.
…
Forty-eight hours from now, whatever happens at the polls, the political establishment will be significantly diminished in power, to a degree we could not have hoped for five years ago. That is the key fact to bear in mind, regardless of the details of the result. So, no more tactical voting; our vote now must be strategic and that strategy is to advance the influence and credibility of UKIP until the day when it is eventually empowered to mend broken Britain.

Tim C: Don’t vote tactical, vote strategic. The bigger UKIP’s share of the vote this time, the bigger the hole below the waterline of the legacy liars. The more second places we achieve, the more MPs we’ll get next time. It doesn’t matter which pro-EU MP you get this time by not voting tactically. What maters is the future. UKIP started out 20 years ago with zero % of the vote. We won the European elections last year. As Pat tells us below, if it takes 100 arrows to stop the charging elephant, every one of those arrows counts. Voting for a proven liar to prevent another proven liar winning…. now that really is a wasted vote. A vote for UKIP is not a wasted vote if you believe in what we are trying to achieve for you and our country.

Thanks Phil, and all the well-wishers on this thread. I’m heading out soon to drive round the polling stations and encourage UKIP voters to get their UKIP leaning friends out to vote. This is the most important election of my lifetime. If you believe in liberty and self determination for Britain, do your bit to help win it back.

On my way now to vote UKIP in the would be socialist republic of Scotland, where unicorns graze contentedly on the plantations of money trees and flatulently drive the free energy from the ubiquitous wind turbines that adorn every land and seascape.
Won’t achieve much I know, but I will feel good at the protest.
Good luck Roger and all Ukippers throughout the UK.

Will: Many who have been disaffected with party politics and stopped voting years ago, or never started, have registered this year specifically so they can vote UKIP. In my town, there are 10,500 MORE people on the voting register this year than last. They didn’t make the effort just so they could vote for one of the parties they haven’t bothered about in the past. There are a lot of ‘shy kippers’ out there who aren’t making a big noise about it, but will turn out for us today.

It’s true that politics involves making deals and compromises with people from other parties, especially now we are moving into an era of no overall control for any one party. Politics is the art of the possible, not one of purity. Nonetheless, we hope to continue reshaping the political lndscape and winning the arguments. Rome wasn’t rebuilt in a day.

I placed my vote and then bought a Daily Express. I read about a Tory lady’s oil tank being vandalised such that a large quantity of oil flooded her house and about an old gentleman/pensioner who was beaten up because he had a UKIP placard in his garden.

Best of luck TB – if I’d lived in your constituency you’d already have my vote! Alas, this is knee-jerk Labour country, but at least they should end up with a reduced majority – the more reduced the better as far as I’m concerned. I must admit, despite my age and cynicism, I’m quite looking forward to all the squabbling that should start tomorrow.

Nigel Farage has shown that the “political class” is not invulnerable and unchallengeable. It is my hope that all the English speaking countries will take note on how it is done, even with a hostile press!